HONG KONG (SE): “My art is used for the glory of God and each work expresses my relationship with him,” said Father Joseph Tham Kit-chee, an artist who does Chinese calligraphy, paints and engraves seals. He has just put out a new book of his artwork to show the importance of harmony between heaven, human and nature.
Published by Wofoo Foundation, the compilation is titled Art for God, Artworks and Spiritual Reflections. Father Tham uses his selections and reflections to depict harmony with humanity, nature and heaven, as well as the virtues of faith, hope and love as a tool to evangelise and educate.
As a priest and an accomplished artist, Father Tham said that he always tries to express his faith and personal insights through his pieces, which has led him to love God even more.
One of the seal engravings included in the book, or spiritual diary, bears the Chinese words 莖뒈훙뵨 [Heaven, Earth and human in harmony] and depicts God descending from heaven and becoming flesh.
In ancient Chinese characters, the word “heaven” and “human” both resemble a human being. Taking advantage of this similarity, Father Tham craved the words as a man descending from heaven and like a man kneeing down and surrendering himself to God, like Jesus who came to the Earth. The four words in the seal are divided by a cross, a common motif in his works to show that the cross is the way of life.
Father Tham said that he made the seal in early 2020 when Hong Kong’s divided society needed harmony between people after the social unrest of 2019 and when the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic showed a need for a reconciliation with nature and with God.
An exhibition of the artwork in the book is scheduled to run from January 21 to 22 at the Fringe Club, Central.
Father Tham had been a family physician for years in Canada before entering the seminary of the Legionaries of Christ. After 10 years of training, he was ordained a priest in 2004.
His medical knowledge supported his study of bioethics and he has published many books on the subject. He is a former dean of the School of Bioethics at the Pontifical Athenaeum Regina Apostolorum in Rome. In recent years he has served both in Rome and in Hong Kong, and is currently teaching at the Holy Spirit Seminary College of Theology and Philosophy.
In the book’s introduction, Father Tham shares his journey as an artist. Born in Hong Kong, he started to learn Chinese painting at the age of 12. Even after emigrating to Canada at 15-years-old, he did not give up his training and learned from a teacher painting in the tradition of the Lingnan School. He also studied Chinese calligraphy and seal carving while in Canada.
He said that during the first six years of seminary life, his zeal for Chinese art lay dormant. Even though he has more flexibility to manage his time as a priest, he still finds it challenging to create art due to the lack of spark.
His passion for creating art was rekindled when he came to Hong Kong and met some old Chinese friends. “Many of my more recent pieces seem to be an extension of my increasingly profound appreciation of Chinese culture, including Confucian, Daoist and Buddist traditions, and their compatibility and resonance with the Christian message,” he said.
In early 2021, Father Tham was one of the religious artists who participated in the Art for God project of the Diocesan Audiovisual Centre, and sold his works to raise funds for church building and development in the diocese [Sunday Examiner, 17 January 2021].
Now Chinese art has become a nighttime spiritual activity for him, when he is quiet or when inspiration comes. Father Tham has a collection of hundreds of works and more than a hundred uncarved stones. He shared that it takes a lot of effort to carve the stones but, for him, calligraphy is even more difficult as deeper thoughts have to be expressed on a larger piece of paper.
Whether he is writing in ink or carving with a knife, Father Tham always puts his faith and ethics into his work. He believes the greatest ethical problem nowadays is that people want to dominate everything and replace God, which is the very reason why he hopes to encourage the harmony between humans, heaven and Earth through his work.
Translated from an article in the Kung Kao Po. Additional information, Sunday Examiner
